Going on holiday is a risky business when you are president of France. When Nicolas Sarkozy borrowed the luxury yacht of a French billionaire businessman, his image never recovered. A string of flash holidays thereafter didn't help, nor did Paris Match magazine obligingly airbrushing out the love-handles from an unflattering picture of him canoeing in white bermuda shorts in New Hampshire.

So when the new president, François Hollande, headed to the beach this month, he continued his political branding exercise as "President Normal". First came orchestrated photographs of the president and his partner ,Valerie Trierweiler, taking the train rather than private jet. At the decidedly not normal official presidential summer retreat at Fort Brégançon on the Côte d'Azur, they went off to shake hands with "normal" sunbathers on the beach and sipped Perrier. Hollande's blue bermuda shorts and Trierweiler's black bikini were obligingly described as "normal" by celebrity magazines.

But the careful communications plan was nearly upset when the satirical weekly Le Canard Enchaine reported the arrival of a large order of cushions from an exclusive Spanish design firm. Spending money on luxury padding for the presidential backside when France was about to enter recession risked being dangerously off-message.

Whatever the holiday PR, things are not looking sunny for Hollande. Opinion polls show that Normal is not enough. TuesdayToday marks Hollande's first 100 days in power, a symbolic moment. The latest Ifop poll, published in the rightwing newspaper Le Figaro, found confidence in Hollande was sliding. Even if 57% of French people agreed he had kept his election promises – including the popular moves of lowering his salary, withdrawing French troops from Afghanistan, raising taxes on rich households and allowing people who began work young to retire at 60 – a majority of people were sceptical about whether he could resolve some of France's biggest problems: the huge public deficit, record 10% unemployment and the death of French industry. More than half of French people were unhappy with his action since his election and 51% thought France was changing for the worse.

How to explain the dip in Hollande's ratings so soon after the election? There was never much room for a state of grace in a country struggling with mass layoffs, unemployment, an uncompetitive labour market and an inability to pay for its public services and generous welfare state without borrowing from the markets. September is going to be a killer month – the government must somehow find €33bn (£26bn) in tax rises and savings for next year's budget. Hollande's tax increases on the wealthy might be hugely popular, but they aren't enough to balance the books.

One problem for Hollande is vocabulary. He came to power on anti-austerity rhetoric but must now decide how to sell the nation what many commentators predict will be an unavoidable austerity plan for France. The government dodges any mention of the dreaded A-word. But even the leftwing daily Libération is growing tired of this culture of: "Don't mention the war". The paper complained this week that while the rest of Europe springs into action on the economic crisis, France is in a "strange torpor". The nation knows there must be some kind of collective belt-tightening; there's an impatience about not being told plainly what it will entail.

In the summer lull, the rightwing UMP opposition party, fighting its own internal leadership battle, is seizing the moment to slam Hollande for what it calls his dithering and "inaction" over Syria. Sarkozy, who in office notoriously cosied up to Bashar al-Assad, has publicly twisted the knife over the need for French "action" to stop the carnage. Hollande, punctuating his vacation with public appearances, has retorted that France was pushing hard for a "political solution" in Syria. He might have had a quiet seaside 58th birthday celebration this weekend, he has not yet caught the train back to Paris, but Hollande's holiday is clearly over.